The inventive concepts described herein relate to method of operating a memory controller and/or a data storage device including a memory controller
Semiconductor memory devices may include volatile memory devices such as a DRAM, an SRAM, and the like and nonvolatile memory devices such as an EEPROM, a FRAM, a PRAM, an MRAM, flash memory, and the like. While the volatile memory devices lose data stored therein at power-off, the nonvolatile memory devices may retain data stored therein even at power-off. In particular, the flash memory may have merits such as fast program speed, low power consumption, storage of large amounts of data, and the like. Thus, a data storage device including the flash memory may be widely used as a data storage medium.
Flash memory may be divided into a two-dimensional flash memory and a three-dimensional flash memory. In the two-dimensional flash memory, memory cells may be formed in parallel with a substrate. In the three-dimensional flash memory, memory cells may be formed in a direction perpendicular to the substrate. If a defective page is generated at a data read or write operation of the two-dimensional flash memory, a memory block including the defective page may be treated as a bad block. The bad block may not be used or may be managed to be infrequently used.
The number of memory blocks in the two-dimensional flash memory may be more than that in the three-dimensional flash memory. Also, a memory block of the two-dimensional flash memory may be larger in size than that of the three-dimensional flash memory. Although a memory block including a defective page is managed as a bad block, there may be nothing wrong with the two-dimensional flash memory. However, since the three-dimensional flash memory includes a fewer number of memory blocks and a block size of the three-dimensional flash memory is large, a problem may arise when a memory block including a defective page is managed as a bad block.